A diary of life in rural Redwood, Co. Tipperary as told by a city girl

Home-made feed for Ducklings

You’ll all have been blown away by the lovely photo of Molly and her babies last week. Well I’m glad to say they are thriving :)

She’s even taken them to the pond…. scared the living daylights out of me. There are cattle in the field too. She took on two of the cows who attempted to get close to babies…. and she won :)

Lifeguard on duty

When we had our chick born here last year I enquired locally about buying chick feed – the technical term is ‘chick crumb’ – the smallest bag I could get was huge! And was full of gm maize and corn so I resorted to making my own.

When it came to feeding the ducklings I didn’t even try to buy stuff, I just went on the old ‘google’ and did some research. Ducklings can tolerate a slightly different feed to chicks. So I will share the recipe I am using.

As an aside…. I am buying the seeds and dry fruits in our local Aldi store. I am sure when the high powered Buyers and Marketeers sat down and decided to introduce this new range of seeds…. Duck Feed was not on their list. I would love to know their reaction :) It makes me giggle at the thought of them sitting there in their suits… thinking healthy breads and breakfasts! Not Duck Feed!

Seed mix for ducklings

Ingredients:

200 gr Rolled Barley

200 gr Porridge Oats

70 gr Sunflower Seeds

70 gr Pumpkin Seeds

70 gr Lentils

50 gr wheatgerm

50 gr sesame seeds

20 gr linseed/flax seeds

Sprinkling of dried fruit

Method:

I know – I’m probably just being fussy – but I blitz down the first four ingredients…. the pumpkin seeds are the hardest to blitz. Then just add in the rest of the ingredients.

When I made the first batch it lasted almost the entire week. This week – there are 11 ducklings – I am making it every second day. So next week I may resort to making a bigger batch at a time.

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12 Responses

Thank you, Margaret! I routinely feed wild ducks and geese at a nearby lake, and I will mix up a bag of this to take along the next time I go. I keep reading that bread is not good for them, but didn’t know what might be better. Your photo of the little family if beautiful!

Hello! I will ba a new baby duckling owner in a few days and I’m honestly a little scared, he will be a house duck and will probably be spoiled ;) ….. If you could please help me with raising him or at least get me started I’d appreciate it SO much! I’m sure he will too :) and also…. What does Blitz mean?

Enjoy your duckling! Ducklings are so easy to rear, just need to be nice to them, that is all! Apologies by ‘blitz’ I mean put through a food processor, but in actual fact the ducklings grow so fast, you don’t really need to do that.

[…] For three weeks nothing happened then yesterday we heard a squawk. Our boisterous puppy ran out to investigate and low and behold there was a chick, and another and another. Four little balls of fluff had hatched under their surrogate mother and were looking for food. Our pup was beside herself with excitement, mother hen was protective, all of them were hungry. With no chick food in the house I rang Oldfarm’s Margaret for advice, not realising she’d blogged the recipe. […]